Margo Sawyer

Margo Sawyer

Artpace Exhibitions

About Margo Sawyer

Texas-based Margo Sawyer was born in 1958 in Washington, DC and was raised in London. She received her B.A. from the Chelsea School of Art in London and her M.F.A. in sculpture from Yale University. She is an Associate Professor of Sculpture at The University of Texas at Austin and founded and directs 1/4 Hora Project Space, an alternative space in Elgin, Texas.

Since the early 1980s, Sawyer has exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at P.S. 1, New York (1989); Barbara Toll Gallery, New York (1989, 1991); Women and Their Work, Austin (1992, 1999); Diverseworks Artspace, Houston (1994); Sagacho Exhibit Space, Tokyo (1996); GalleryGallery, Kyoto (1996); Austin Museum of Art (1998); and the Galveston Art Center, Galveston, TX (1999). Her participation in group exhibitions has included shows at the ICA London; Portland Art Museum; and Socrates Sculpture Park, New York. She is the recipient of numerous grants, notably fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1986); American Academy in Rome (1986-87); Art Matters Inc. (1987); Change, Inc. (1989); Arts International (1994); Fullbright (1982-83: India, 1995-96: Japan); and Japan Foundation (1996).

For much of her career, Margo Sawyer’s large-scale installations have emerged from observations of historic and contemporary sites of sacred architecture. She is interested in the relationship between space and transcendence as explored in Buddhism and Hinduism. From this research, Sawyer creates sculptural topographies that map a contemplative terrain that is part architecture and part landscape.